I faced him in turn, erect and unflinching.  “Professor Sebastian,” I answered, in my coldest and calmest tone, “you say what is not true.  If you consult the list of passengers by the Vindhya, now posted near the companion-ladder, you will find the names of Hilda Wade and Hubert Cumberledge duly entered.  We took our passage after you inspected the list at the office to see whether our names were there—­in order to avoid us.  But you cannot avoid us.  We do not mean that you shall avoid us.  We will dog you now through life—­not by lies or subterfuges, as you say, but openly and honestly.  It is you who need to slink and cower, not we.  The prosecutor need not descend to the sordid shifts of the criminal.”

The other passenger had sidled away quietly the moment he saw our conversation was likely to be private; and I spoke in a low voice, though clearly and impressively, because I did not wish for a scene.  I was only endeavouring to keep alive the slow, smouldering fire of remorse in the man’s bosom.  And I saw I had touched him on a spot that hurt.  Sebastian drew himself up and answered nothing.  For a minute or two he stood erect, with folded arms, gazing moodily before him.  Then he said, as if to himself:  “I owe the man my life.  He nursed me through the plague.  If it had not been for that—­if he had not tended me so carefully in that valley in Nepaul—­I would throw him overboard now—­catch him in my arms and throw him overboard!  I would—­and be hanged for it!”

He walked past us as if he saw us not, silent, erect, moody.  Hilda stepped aside and let him pass.  He never even looked at her.  I knew why; he dared not.  Every day now, remorse for the evil part he had played in her life, respect for the woman who had unmasked and outwitted him, made it more and more impossible for Sebastian to face her.  During the whole of that voyage, though he dined in the same saloon and paced the same deck, he never spoke to her, he never so much as looked at her.  Once or twice their eyes met by accident, and Hilda stared him down; Sebastian’s eyelids dropped, and he stole away uneasily.  In public, we gave no overt sign of our differences; but it was understood on board that relations were strained:  that Professor Sebastian and Dr. Cumberledge had been working at the same hospital in London together; and that owing to some disagreement between them Dr. Cumberledge had resigned—­which made it most awkward for them to be travelling together by the same steamer.

We passed through the Suez Canal and down the Mediterranean.  All the time, Sebastian never again spoke to us.  The passengers, indeed, held aloof from the solitary, gloomy old man, who strode along the quarter-deck with his long, slow stride, absorbed in his own thoughts, and intent only on avoiding Hilda and myself.  His mood was unsociable.  As for Hilda, her helpful, winning ways made her a favourite with all the women, as her pretty face did with all the men.